The plague spreads as the past infects the present again.
Creative Staff:
Story: Nancy A. Collins
Art: Patrick Berkenkotter
What They Say:
In “The Dragon Chariot”, the third chapter in “The Accursed” story arc, fresh outbreak of the dreaded ‘black rabies’-a plague that turns those who suffer from it into raving homicidal maniacs-sends Vampirella and The Kabal’s top field agent, the werewolf Tristan to Athens, Greece, in search of the second Accursed involved in Dr. Faustus’ plan to end the world. The evil alchemist’s co-conspirator is none other than the legendary sorceress Medea, scorned wife of the hero Jason and granddaughter of the sun-god Helios, who was cursed with immortality by Zeus for murdering her own children. Can Vampirella and her new allies stop Medea before she spreads the contagion throughout the world and uncover the identity of the mysterious source of the cursed blood used to create the murder plague?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As we saw with Doctor Faustus, there are those that are long lived, cursed in most cases, that have it in for people in general. It’s amusing in a sense because if they really wanted to end the world, there are plenty of ways to do it from working in the shadows that could cause massive destruction. With Faustus dealt with, Vampirella now has to turn her focus on the next of the three that are causing all of this and in some ways seems to be little more than a go-between for Faustus and whoever the mysterious third is. The Faustus segment definitely worked well for me and this installment does too, though it’s a bit compressed in order to get it all done within one issue before moving on to the next.
The focus here is on Medea, former wife of the hero Jason from the days of yore over four thousand years ago. We see what she’s doing in the present as she owns an airline named Helios in Greece that allows her to travel easily, but also to play a bit as she spends her time now and then playing at being a flight attendant and causing a little trouble with troublesome passengers. With a new outbreak occurring there because of what she’s done in spreading the plague there, we get some decent backstory from Evily in the Kabal about Medea. It’s a familiar format for the book in basically doing the info dump, but it works well to fill us in on things from the past, the reworkings for things here and the kind of threat she represents. Like most of the dark things in this series, Medea has an interesting past as it plays out and it fits into that old school kind of revenge that certainly gives her purpose, but also explains the curse of being forced to live forever.
Naturally, things turn chaotic when Vampirella and her small team make their way to Athens to confront her as the outbreak is underway and finding information isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world. The trip to the airline headquarters works well as it fills in a few not so blank blanks about Medea, which in turn leads Vampirella and the others to where she’s orchestrating her latest event. The idea of her looking for a way to end her own life is a familiar thread among stories about those cursed with immortality and there’s a lot to like in how Medea acts in all of this and some of those that she employs to fight back against her and Tristan. We also get a little more of a nod about Evily’s greater role in things, which isn’t a surprise as one can suspect her of ulterior motives with her own agenda. Medea’s story is closed out quickly here, which doesn’t bother me much, but I’m certainly intrigued by the potential of the third and final person they have to hunt down.
In Summary:
Vampirella continues to be a pretty fun book overall with what it does, but I keep finding my main complaining coming back to the coloring style of it as it’s so dark that, at least through digital versions, it’s getting harder and harder to make out certain scenes. The story itself works well and this installment moves things forward well in exploring the outbreaks and those behind it. Vampirella isn’t fully in control here with what she’s doing as she’s mostly being whisked from sequence to sequence, much as Drago did, but we continue to get a solid education about the world she lives in each time and it’s establishing a very solid mythology – at least for those opponents that manage to survive their encounter with her.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: February 4th, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
